Lecture 9.docx

The last of the three great treaties, the appeal to the German nobility. Again, let\'s think our way back to Luther\'s time. One of the obvious problems or one of the things that is coming to Luther\'s mind is the way in which the church has appropriated to itself so much that only should only be...

The last of the three great treaties, the appeal to the German nobility. Again, let\'s think our way back to Luther\'s time. One of the obvious problems or one of the things that is coming to Luther\'s mind is the way in which the church has appropriated to itself so much that only should only belong to what we would now call the secular state. Luther would say, again, this comes back to the cross. Church power is wielded in a very uncross-like fashion. The papacy engages in wars. The papacy engages in political intrigue. As Luther looks and starts to think about what does a reformed church, what does a church of the Reformation look like, what needs to be done? What needs to be done? The sacramental system needs to be reformed. Secondly, the ethical implications of his new understanding of salvation need to be worked out. We\'ve done that in the Babylonian captivity and the freedom of the Christian man. Secondly, we need to address the relationship between the church and the state. Church-state crisis or question is really precipitated by three things, three factors. First of all, there\'s the failure, the consistent failure of the church to reform itself. Luther I think in 1517 had every hope that the church would take on board his critique and would reform itself from the inside. By 1520, hope for that is fading. Secondly, and this is where the pragmatism comes in, it must have become very clear to Luther by this point, by 1520, that his survival and the survival of the movement that he is leading is predicated upon the support of the secular magistrate. Frederick the Wise is a crucial figure in the Luther story. If Frederick the Wise had not taken the stand that he\'d taken on Luther, if he\'d not agreed, decided basically to quietly and firmly support him, Luther would have been extradited to Rome and executed. Or extradited to Rome and if you ever visit Rome, you visit the Vatican City, just over the other side of the bridge there is that circular, dark circular castle prison. That\'s where Luther would have been put and just forgotten about essentially. He\'d either been executed or would have been stuck in there and left to see out his days in anonymity. And thirdly, the Reformation is pointing towards a general collapse in authority anyway. The Leipzig Disputation, the Leipzig Debate, when he clashes with Eck and he makes that, in some ways, debating error of gratuitously dismissing or gratuitously undermining the authority of the Council of Constance and thereby the authority of conciliarism, really does bring into sharp focus that authority as a whole is under question at this point and needs rethinking. Where does authority lie? Luther\'s conclusion will be church authority lies with the word and the cross. And Luther will move church authority from being a magisterial thing more to what we now consider to be a ministerial thing. We had the sad task at my church about two years ago of excommunicating somebody. But when we excommunicate somebody in the OPC, we\'re doing it ministerially. And in some ways, we\'re doing it to the best of our ability. The person we\'re excommunicating doesn\'t seem to be a Christian and therefore we are acting in accordance with that. But in excluding him from our congregation, we are really simply saying to him, you know, as far as the word, as far as we understand the Word of God, you\'re not a Christian. We are not excluding him from the church invisible, one might say. That\'s between him and the Lord. We would say there\'s no basis for believing he\'s part of the true church. We don\'t think that. But we could be wrong. We do not act as an infallible magisterium. We act as a ministerium, if you like. And Luther will push church authority that way where it\'s really rooted very much in the Word and refracted through the cross. Luther then writes and addresses the German nobility in this text. Luther\'s received a lot of support from the German nobles. It\'s interesting, a little bit like, you know, maybe the election of Donald Trump, I don\'t know. Perhaps that\'s a good example where, you know, Trump seems to have been elected by, we might say probably an unlikely combination of voting blocs. On the surface it seems unlikely that religious conservatives would sort of hold their nose and pull the lever in the same way that people belonging to other blocs might do it. But that\'s what happened. Luther in 1520 enjoys, only temporarily, but at this point in 1520 he enjoys, if not universal appeal, wide appeal to different sectors of society who think that he\'s talking their language and has their concerns at heart. The peasants like him because he\'s talking the language of freedom. And maybe they\'re looking here at some kind of political revolution which will give them a better shake at things. The nobility like him because he\'s pressing against Rome and that will lower the tax burden that flows south. Knowing how the nobility operates doesn\'t necessarily mean that the tax breaks will flow down to the lowest members of society, but it will mean that they keep more of the tax money for themselves. So the nobility like what he\'s saying because he\'s putting a kind of Germany first take on things. You could see him running around with red knight\'s hats with make Germany great again or something on them. That would have been the attitude of the nobility. My son, my oldest son, who\'s a huge Donald Trump fan I have to say, he\'s actually made his dog, he says he\'s got a dog and he says bow for Donald and the dog will bow. It\'s terribly embarrassing. He did buy a make America great again hat, not to wear but to send to his cousin over the United Kingdom and he took a picture of me with my make America great again hat on. The bad thing for me this summer was I\'m bald, basically bald and as you bald guys will know, summers are bad for bald guys. We have to cover our heads or we go down with skin cancer. My baseball cap that I\'m very proud of, my son ran a track for the University of Pennsylvania so I have a pentrack hat, a nice ivy league pentrack hat that I wear. It\'s bright red and it just became too risky because people come and say, you\'re wearing a Trump hat. No, no, it\'s a University of Pennsylvania hat. So I just switched to a blue Nike hat in the end. It just became, I\'m going to get beaten up by an illiterate person who thinks I\'m a pro Donald Trump guy here. So anyway, I was given by a Presbyterian friend a red baseball cap with make worship great again on it. That\'s kind of cool. But again, it\'s too close to be worn in public, too risky to go outside wearing that. But Luther is kind of doing something like that. We might say that in the German speaking lands in 1520, there\'s a reaction against the establishment going on where a confederation of groups that one would not normally put together are rallying around Luther at this point. And so Luther writes his appeal to the German nobility because they do hold the levers of political power. And in many ways, the future of the Reformation lies in the hands of the nobility, locally with Frederick the Wise, more broadly with the knights of the land. And Luther is thinking through what role does the nobility have in a biblical church situation? And so he writes his address to the German nobility, which is essentially an appeal to the nobles to take back power that rightly belongs to them, which has been stolen from them by the church. You know, brilliant. Nobody ever lost by telling a particular group, you know, you really should be more powerful and more important than you are. You know, in some ways, it plays beautifully to the situation. But I have to say that I have an awful lot of sympathy with Luther\'s position on church and state as well. I think actually what he\'s calling for is a social reformation which will by inevitable consequence lead to a church that is more oriented towards what the church should be doing, engaging in, we might say, spiritual affairs than directly in political affairs. And he, Luther in classic fashion, we saw this in the Babylonian captivity of the church when he talks about the three shackles, the three shackles that bind the church. In this treatise, he talks about the three walls that the papacy has erected around itself to protect itself. The three walls that the nobles need to broach, need to break through in order to bring down the power of the papacy. So again, Luther, you know, he\'s a great writer. I don\'t know when it was that it became a rule of thumb that Protestant theology has to be badly written. I really don\'t. Luther wrote exciting theology that grabbed the imagination. I think G.K. Chesterton is a great writer and very helpful to Christians. A Roman Catholic. Could Protestants not have produced the G.K. Chesterton? Why is it that the great writers don\'t seem to be with us? Luther was a great writer and this treatise grabs the imagination. He\'s using the kind of image that knights would have understood. Martial language to talk about what\'s going on. And the first wall, the first wall that has to be breached is the fundamental distinction that the papacy makes between religious callings and secular callings. And this may be the politically and culturally most radical thing that Luther ever does. The demolition of the distinction between sacred and secular and the rebuilding of that on an entirely different conceptual foundation. The distinction between religious and other callings is central to a lot of, still to Catholicism today, that the priesthood and perhaps even more so monasticism are regarded as special and elite callings that have a charism, that have an intrinsic quality to them that is lacked by others, those who teach or who are doctors or something like this. For Luther this flies in the face of his cross-shaped understanding of the Christian life. There\'s an elitism here that Luther doesn\'t like. It places monks and priests and the works they do and the calling they engage in, it places them on a higher pedestal from everybody else. Luther regards it as unscriptural. He regards it as nonsensical. And of course within his understanding of justification it is nonsensical. For what is a, who is the righteous person? A righteous person is not determined by any intrinsic quality or any outward property that they might have. Righteousness is determined by grasping the word of God by faith, being united to Christ and receiving Christ\'s righteousness. That\'s what makes a man or a woman righteous. Think about that as that impacts upon the distinction between the sacred and the secular. What is it that makes something sacred for Luther? That it is done in faith, that it is done in faith. And Luther, you know, for Luther, take a monk, the monk who spends his day on his knees saying the rosary and goes to bed at night pleased that he\'s done so many good things to please God. To Luther that person is not righteous and we cannot say that that calling is a holy or sacred calling. But the man who sweeps the streets and does it out of faith and does it to the glory of God, for Luther that man engages in something sacred. Now there are limits to this. There are illegitimate occupations. One could not, for example, be a prostitute in faith to the glory of God. One could not be a serial killer in faith to the glory of God. Though Luther makes the point you could be a hangman. The village hangman, if he hangs people to the glory of God and does it out of faith, then that is a holy and sacred calling. And of course that\'s a legitimate calling for Luther because, you know, he\'s fulfilling the role that his Lord has given to the secular magistrate. What is the secular magistrate to do? He is to protect the innocent and to put down the evil, two sides of the same coin. The hangman in hanging evil people is simply fulfilling a legitimate secular calling. And if he does it as a Christian to the glory of God, then it\'s a holy calling too. Luther has a section in one of his works where he talks about the hangman. Faced with the Anabaptists who think that when you become a Christian, you need to, you know, the church is effectively a separate society. Luther writes a little work that soldiers too can be saved and makes the point that being a soldier is a legitimate calling for a Christian. First of all, it\'s legitimate in the secular sphere because it\'s part of putting down the wicked and protecting the innocent. And secondly, it can therefore be a legitimate calling for a Christian and if done in faith to the glory of God, it\'s a holy and sacred calling. This is explosive. Jump forward 150 years or so. Jump forward to the Netherlands, the Dutch golden age of painting. The Dutch golden age, to me it\'s one of the great artistic moments. Let\'s say that you could, you know, you go to Europe for a couple of days and you spend a day in the Vatican Museum. Probably one of the greatest art museums in the face of the earth. I\'m told when I was there and did the little tour, the person said that the whole collection I think was insured for \$10 because you have to insure it by law. But you know, if the Sistine Chapel burns down, you know, how much is it going to cost to replace it? You can\'t replace it. It\'s beautiful. But then you spend a day in Rome and you do the tour of the Vatican Museum and then you jump on a plane and you fly to the Hague and you go to the Rijksmuseum in the Hague in the Netherlands and you spend the day looking at the works of Rembrandt and Jan Vermeer and the great Dutch golden age paintings. What will strike you? Well one of the things you\'ll see that\'s in common with both is how beautiful it is. You know, these aren\'t people urinating on a canvas and then selling it to some idiot for half a million dollars. That\'s what we do today. That\'s ugly. I\'m sorry, that\'s ugly. You\'ll be struck by how beautiful it is, how technically sophisticated it is. But you\'ll also be struck by a difference. In the Vatican Museum, certainly almost all of the Renaissance paintings will have a religious theme. Even the famous painting of the academy in Athens, you know, you\'ve got Plato pointing upwards and Aristotle pointing down, it\'s reflecting the difference in their philosophy, is part of a series of panels that culminate in a pope celebrating the mass. So there\'s a religious theme and narrative there. But you won\'t find that in Vermeer. What you find in Vermeer is a painting of a milkmaid walking through a stone arch carrying a pail of milk. Or you\'ll find the girl with the pearl earrings. Stunningly beautiful paintings, profoundly secular themes or non-religious themes. Now Vermeer happens to be a Catholic. It\'s always unfortunate because it doesn\'t quite perfectly work for my illustration. But Vermeer could not have painted those paintings without the Protestant Reformation. Because it\'s the Protestant Reformation that allows Vermeer to find sacred beauty in very secular scenes. And that really is what Luther is beginning to tease out in 1520 with his address to the secular nobility. First thing we ought to do is get rid of this sacred-secular distinction. That\'s not a distinction that applies intrinsically to things. It\'s almost we might say it\'s an attitude of mind kind of thing. Yes, I can find sacred beauty in a humble milkmaid because that is a beautiful task when done to the glory of God. Somebody\'s got to fetch the milk. It\'s a necessary task and we can find something beautiful there. Now a lot of modern Catholic critics, social and cultural critics, make the point, and in some ways there\'s some strength to this point, that in making the secular sacred you can also end up making the sacred secular. And if you look for example at Charles Taylor\'s book A Secular Age, it\'s about 900 pages, it\'s a mammoth book. Or you look at Brad Gregory\'s brilliant, from a scholarly perspective, brilliant book, The Unintended Reformation. Taylor and Gregory both argue that the rampant secularism we now face is actually the result of the breaching of the sacred-secular divide, the Reformation, and therefore Protestantism is responsible ultimately for modern secularism. It\'s a very interesting debate, not one that\'s specifically relevant to us today here, but what I want to draw out is how this move of Luther, whether you think it\'s a good thing or a bad thing, it has profound cultural implications that ripple across Europe and certainly to an extent we live with the consequences thereof today. There\'s a hand going up somewhere over here, yeah. Is there any difference between Luther right now and the Catholic Church in this moment, like for example with the Spanish empire, they were also fighting and winning souls for Christ in a sense, or even with the Italian armies around and trying to protect the Catholic movement. I don\'t see the difference between Luther embracing the civil government and what the Catholic movement is doing on the other side. At the same time as Luther? Yeah. Yeah, well it\'s a good question. How is Catholicism dealing with this? Well I think the major difference would be this. The Catholic Church has in the 16th century has secular, what we call secular ambitions in a way that what Luther\'s saying is no, the secular magistrate has to take those ambitions back and not allow the church to encroach on those territories. Whereas the Catholic Church, yes the Catholic Church is embracing the secular way of doing things in many ways. That\'s not directly touching on the sacred secular divide, but practically and politically yes the Catholic Church is using the secular authorities and acting like a secular authority in order to achieve its way. We have a certain vestige of that today. The Vatican of course continues to be a state. Strictly speaking the Vatican is not Italy. The Vatican has embassies. It has representatives to other states. led to a very interesting book by a British civil rights lawyer Jeffrey Robertson QC, The Case Against the Pope, where he wrote a little book arguing that because the Pope is a head of state he could therefore be tried in The Hague over the cover-up of child abuse. It\'s fascinating, I mean never happened, but it\'s a fascinating book. But he\'s making the point there that the Pope isn\'t just a head of a church, he\'s also a head of a state as well. And it\'s not really until the 19th century when Garibaldi strips the papal lands away from the papacy that the papacy is dramatically weakened as what we would call a secular political entity as well. And in America they have the still a sort of vestige. This 1960 John F. Kennedy has to distance himself from his Catholicism in order to get elected. And that\'s because there was this view that the Catholic Church is not just a church, it\'s also a foreign power. How can you uphold the constitution and also pledge loyalty to a foreign power? So I would say in practice the difference between Luther and the Catholic Church is this. Luther is saying to the secular powers, be secular, be secular. And that helps his reformation because it reduces the power of the church. The Catholic Church is using the secular powers to enhance the power of the church. So that\'s the big difference between the two. So that then is a very significant move on the part of Luther. The second wall that needs to be broached is the church. And when Luther says church here he means the institutional church, the hierarchy of the church as the sole expounder of the scriptures, which for Luther is the way they maintain the power of the keys, they keep power. For Luther the authority of the church is transformed in the light of the cross. The power of the keys lies with all Christian believers. The power of expounding scripture lies with the church as a whole, not simply with the magisterium. Now a couple of qualifications we have to put in here. Remember this is 1520. By the end of this decade it will become very clear to Luther that you cannot simply give everybody the Bible and expect them to come up with a correct interpretation of it themselves. Luther here is arguing in what we might say a radically democratic way relative to the authority of the church. He will backpedal from that somewhat when he sees the chaos that ensues. The times around about the time when you know Luther says, you know, why do we have, why do you have a priest? Well you have a priest because it\'d be chaos if everybody stood up and tried to expound the scriptures. It\'d be chaos if everybody tried to officiate at the Lord\'s Supper. Very pragmatic argument. Luther will change that. By 1539 he\'s saying no, ordination is a mark of the church. Having a properly trained, competent leadership is a mark of the church. So remember what Luther\'s writing here in 1520, he\'s very confident that the meaning of scripture is pretty clear. Get scripture out there in the vernacular, preach scripture, everybody will be on board with it. He does not anticipate the rise of Zwingli. He does not anticipate that the four apparently fairly simple little words, this is my body, will prove a church-shattering bone of contention among Protestants. And that will somewhat lead him to qualify his views, both of the absolute clarity of scripture and of the need for some kind of competent leadership in the church. But in 1520 he\'s quite happy to say we need to get rid of this idea of the church hierarchy as the expounder of scripture. We need to get rid of that. The whole of the church is to be the expounder of scripture and that leads to his third point, the third point, the third wall that needs to be broached, Pope as supreme authority. Clearly if you shatter the sacred secular distinction and if you shatter the idea that the church, the institutional church is the sole expounder of scripture, then the Pope as supreme authority must fall as well. These walls are not so much walls in some ways, it\'s like dominoes falling over at this point. The Pope himself is subject to the word and this is where the notion of authority is definitely shifting that the Pope has no magisterial authority, the Pope only has ministerial authority as far as the word of God gives it to him. One of the things that I\'ve found most helpful about Luther, in some ways not so directly from Luther but in reflecting on the implications of what Luther\'s saying at points is the limitation of the power of the church is a very important thing. We really should be small government people when it comes to the church, that the church has no authority beyond that which is given to it by the word of God. The illustration I use in my Creedle Imperative book is if a member of my church turns up and dressed in a canary yellow suit or tells me they\'ve become a vegetarian, I really have no power as minister to tell them not to do those things, I might consider them ill-advised, sartorially or in terms of diet but I have no power as minister to interfere on that front because the word does not give me power over the color of suits that people are to wear or whether they eat meat or merely vegetables. I do have power relative to somebody in my congregation committing adultery. Word of God speaks to that. My confessions summarize the word of God and speak to that. There I have power to intervene and my congregants have taken vows to submit to the authority of the elders as far as the elders are acting in conformity with the word of God. But if somebody chooses to wear a tasteless suit, they just look tasteless, nothing I can do about it. That I think is very important. It\'s very important because it\'s that kind of thing that stops churches from becoming cults. The idea of a cult, we tend to think of it often in terms of doctrinal issues. I actually think that the concept of a cult is doctrine is neither here nor there. Cult is a culture, a leadership culture and a followers culture which can develop just as easily in an orthodox church as in a heterodox or heretical sect. What Luther does, I think relative to the Pope, has implications for all of us in terms of our understanding. Yes, ministers have authority but their authority is ministerial not magisterial and is therefore subject to specific limits and has a specific quality to it. So Luther then goes on to offer some positive advice and again this might touch a little on the question a moment ago. Luther on the one hand is saying the church shouldn\'t interfere in secular government and then he goes on to give a whole series of policies that he thinks it might be good if the secular magistrate adopt it. Luther can\'t make them adopt them but he says there are various things. Well there are things first of all that the church needs to address. Needs to address the ostentatious lifestyle of the Pope. Needs to address the power exerted by the cardinals and needs to address the overstaffing of the papal structure. I did some little bit of work on some religious freedom stuff for the Archbishop of Philadelphia and I have an email from him, I have it in writing from him that if ever he becomes Pope, which is highly unlikely being as he\'s conservative and the tendency is in another direction, that he would make me the first Protestant cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church. I have that in writing. I\'m thinking how you print it and put on my, I\'m not quite sure how the Orthodox Presbyterian Church would respond to that. Probably not well I suspect but you know I wouldn\'t mind being the first Protestant cardinal. You get to wear a cool robe and I\'d probably have my portrait painted as well. It would be kind of fun. But the role of the cardinals and then the overstaffing of the papal administrative structure needs to be dealt with as well. So Luther sees that the church must become poorer. The church lives off this tax money that is drawn, that it draws. It shouldn\'t be drawing this tax money. The theology of the cross undercuts or stands in stark opposition to the kind of ostentation that the papacy represents. Then he goes on to offer 27 proposals to the secular magistrate that should be implemented. Many of them deal with taxes, that taxes that go to Rome should be stopped, that appeals, legal appeals that get referred to Rome should be stopped. Another nice one. No one should ever again kiss the Pope\'s feet. It\'s a good one. Personal hygiene was pretty terrible in the 16th century partly because I think they thought that opening the pores let germs in so they tended not to wash very often. Kissing somebody\'s feet in the 16th century would have been a particularly repellent thing to have to do. Pilgrimage to Rome should be stopped. The civil magistrate should take it in hand to make sure that there is one pastor per town. One of the big problems faced at the Reformation was the problem of pluralities, that one pastor would be looking after a number of parishes. That\'s because it often bought lucrative benefits. You had the income, the tithes from a number of parishes. The Reformers were opposed to that practice. One of the things that the Reformation is ever really able to solve decisively is the problem of pluralities. It\'s a real problem in the 16th century. Mendicancy, begging should be abolished. That of course hits at some of the influential monastic orders of the time. The mendicant orders, the Dominicans, the Franciscans raised their money through begging. Indulgences should be scrapped. Interesting enough, a political alliance should be sought with the Bohemians. The Hussites had fought war, a war after the death of John Huss, primarily over the issue of the right to take communion in both kinds. But of course that was in some ways an idiom for expressing their own national consciousness and their own desire for further independency from Rome and from the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Emperor should be allowed to rule as he chooses because he is a German Emperor and not beholden to the church. And then the 27th proposal which is debated as to whether Luther wrote it or not. The banks should effectively be nationalized. That the secular magistrate should take control of the banks as a way of preventing the banks being used to finance corruption. What\'s interesting about Luther\'s proposals is a lot of them have economic significance. Of course that plays well. It plays well to the nobles. Essentially what emerges from these is that the nobles will find their political and economic power enhanced by the Reformation. Is it a cynical ploy on Luther\'s part? Possibly partly so. But I also think he is pointing to a necessary financial reform that must take place at this point in the Reformation. So that then is of the three great treaties of 1520. Any questions, comments on those? Yeah. Repeat the names of those three treaties. Three treaties. The Babylonian captivity of the church which is the treaties on the sacraments. The freedom of the Christian man sometimes translated on Christian freedom or on Christian liberty and an appeal to the German nobility. One of the, we\'re returning now to the narrative. One of the many, from a human perspective, chance occurrences that occurs just in time to take the heat of Luther was the death in January 1519 of the Emperor Maximilian. What that does is it leads to a suspension really throughout much of 1519 of imperial actions against Luther. When the Holy Roman Emperor dies, what happens is his place is taken by the electoral college, the seven electors of the empire. Typically, the chairman, the imperial vicar, is the elector Palatine, the elector based in Heidelberg. In 1519, however, the imperial vicar is Frederick the Wise. So at a critical moment when Luther could have come under huge fire after the Diet of Augsburg, the empire is effectively paralyzed relative to its action against Luther. The most important issue is the election of the new emperor. And so action against Luther is suspended. And the church is not powerful enough to act against Luther if it can\'t do it in concert with the empire. The new emperor is elected late in the summer of 1519. It\'s Charles V, remember? In late 1518, just before he died, Maximilian secured his appointment as king of the Romans, which is pole position to become emperor. So late summer 1519, the ball can start rolling again. John Eck goes from the Leipzig Disputation, the Leipzig Debate, to Rome to report firsthand on Luther\'s errors. Remember the size of Europe? Remember the difficulty of transportation? Remember that there must have been a lot of rumors circulating about what was going on, which was difficult to establish. So Eck\'s visit to Rome is very important for getting firsthand information on how Luther\'s thinking is developed. And as a result, the pope convenes a committee of four men, including Cajetan from the Diet of Augsburg and John Eck, to produce a report on Luther\'s errors. And in May and June, that report is discussed in the Vatican. And a bull is produced dated 15th of June, ex Sergei Domine, rise up, rise out, Lord, is produced dated June 15th, 1520, the famous bull of excommunication. It is proclaimed in public in St. Peter\'s and the papal chancellery on July the 24th. The bull is interesting. It\'s the bull of excommunication against Luther. It makes no reference, no explicit reference to Luther\'s views of justification or faith, partly because these are ongoing and developing at this particular point in time, but also because that\'s not the issue. This has become sort of ecumenically significant points in history when it\'s been, well, you know, Luther was not excommunicated for his views of justification, which is technically speaking correct. Luther was excommunicated, of course, for the implications of his views of justification, the implications those views have for his understanding of authority in the sacraments. Behind the scenes, the papal courier is making efforts to get Frederick the Wise to proceed against Luther. You know, let\'s think in practical terms. It\'s one thing, as the outgoing president discovered, to keep drawing red lines. It\'s another thing to act upon them when they are crossed in terms of foreign affairs. The papacy knows that although it\'s promulgated a bull of excommunication against Luther, it is one thing to promulgate a bull, it is another thing to be able to deliver on that bull. And as long as Luther is safe in electoral Saxony with the support of Frederick the Wise, the papacy and then the empire have to make that critical decision. Is it worth going to war over this? And I think by and large, the papacy and the emperor will typically make the decision right up until the death of Luther that containment is better than war. If you can contain the problem, then it\'s okay. It\'s a little bit like policing in Philadelphia, and probably in Los Angeles as well, you know. Certain parts of Philadelphia, I\'m pretty sure that the police are merely there to make sure that people don\'t get out and spill over into the kind of nice places in the city. If you can contain Luther in electoral Saxony, then that\'s not a bad result if it saves plunging the whole of the empire into civil war, particularly when the Turks are snapping at your heels from the east. You know, we tend to forget because our history is by and large Western-oriented, the Ottoman Empire was huge, and it got a long way into Europe. You know, there are reasons why places like Albania are basically Muslim. The Ottomans had a huge influence in Eastern Europe. They got a long way in, and they could have got a whole lot further. Possibly they could have got further if Charles V had decided to plunge the empire into civil war. So the church knows the weakness of its position and is working hard behind the scenes to try to save Frederick the Wise, to hand Luther over. Just be a whole lot easier. The key to implementing the papal bull is going to be the attitude of the emperor and public opinion. And from the end of August 1520, when Luther\'s getting word that this thing is heading his way, Luther is preoccupied with courting public opinion and trying to win over the very young new emperor, Charles V, 2021, young emperor, trying to win over the young emperor to the Reformation cause. He writes to Charles V professing his desire for peace, gets a rather negative response from him. But you know Calvin does a similar thing, doesn\'t he, in the Institute of the Christian Religion. Where does the institutes begin? Well most people think it begins with a statement about the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man. It doesn\'t. It begins with a prefatory letter to the King of France in which Calvin says, basically if you tolerate Protestantism, we\'ll be good citizens. He\'s following in that Greek apologist tradition of saying Christians make good citizens. They make good citizens. These are not men who want unnecessarily to court the hostility of the secular authorities. They want to be good members of society and demonstrate to the secular authorities that that\'s what they will be if they are given space. The bull arrives, well the bull processes through the empire carried by John Eck, publishing the bull, hither and yon, but not in electoral Saxony. That\'s interesting. I think it knows, he knows that Luther\'s popularity in electoral Saxony is so strong that he would not be given a great welcome if he arrived in the territory promulgating a bull of excommunication against the local hero. What he does is he gets the Leipzig militia to deliver the papal bull into electoral Saxony. So he gets the hard men, armed cortege essentially of Leipzig hard men to carry the papal bull over into electoral Saxony. And it appears to have arrived at the university on the 10th of October. It was given to the rector of the university, a man called Peter Burkhard. How many of you have been to Wittenberg? Anybody here been to Wittenberg? A couple of people have been to Wittenberg. Not a big town is it? It\'s probably bigger now than it was then. It would be impossible for the papal bull to arrive in a town the size of Wittenberg and for Luther not to hear about it almost instantaneously. And we know that he must have done because he writes a letter to George Spallatin. Remember Spallatin is the go-between. He\'s the buffer between Luther and Frederick the Wise. He has the ear of Frederick the Wise and the confidence of Luther. Luther writes him a letter dated the 11th of October informing Spallatin that the papal bull has been delivered to the university. And Frederick the Wise sends back a request via Spallatin to ask for Luther to give an explanation of the articles of his thought that the bull condemns. And Luther now takes the opportunity to reiterate his appeal for a council. We need a general council to sort this out. Again note the irony. Luther in 1519, what did Luther do? He called into question the authority of councils when he called into question the Council of Constance. In 1520 I think it\'s pretty convenient for him to say hey we need to sort this out for the council. Don\'t act on this. Let\'s call a council and deal with the issue. Luther appeals for the calling of a council on German soil. Again that German note is struck. Luther is speaking the language of identity and playing to that. And he wants a council called on German soil. What\'s remarkable is the absolute failure of any of the local bishops to promulgate the bull or to use any sanctions against Luther as a result of the bull. It\'s very clear that the local church hierarchy in the areas around Wittenberg are terrified of Frederick the Wise and the position of the nobility. The sort of militant knights, many of whom are pretty violent and scary people, are solidly behind Luther at this point. And it\'s very clear that the popular debate if you like has been won. Luther is a local hero and he\'s not going to be touched as long as he is in Wittenberg.